Jens Laurson And George Pieler
21 September 2007
opinion
Johannesburg — THE U.S. and UK are suggesting they may ratchet up pressure against the Mugabe regime, but it may be too little to affect the attitudes that count: those in Africa. The recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka, Zambia, showed the world once more the "resolve" of Zimbabwe's neighbours to rescue a failing country. That resolve consists of nothing but empty rhetoric, and even that rhetoric tends to bolster, not work at removing, the source of the problem: Robert Mugabe and his regime of crooks. "We are a democracy just as any other democracy. We don't need reform." So says Patrick Chinamasa, the Zimbabwean minister of justice (oxymoronic or cynical?) Such fine words too often issue from those countries furthest from the democratic ideal.
It recalls the negative correlation very often found between a country's official name and the level of freedom found therein. The more references to democracy and republicanism and "freedom" in the name, the greater the chance the country is ruled by an autocratic clique, junta or dictator.
The German Democratic Republic comes to mind, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Free Congo - neither place having ever manifested any of the characteristics splashed across their titles.
Caveat emptor, then - truth in packaging laws do not apply.
Zimbabwe has not renamed itself the People's Free Democratic Republic of Zimbabwe - not yet - but it might as well, so solidly does it belie such a title.
Office-holders who respond "unofficially" in defence of rotten dictatorships always seem to huff and puff with amazingly similar, schoolboy-level tricks of misrepresentation.
Simon Khaya Moyo, Mugabe's ambassador to SA, showed these colours when he recently responded, in the Zimbabwean state-controlled newspaper The Herald, to an article by these - in Moyo's words - "thoroughly misinformed" and "sabre-rattling" authors that had appeared in Business Day.
But the true tragedy in Zimbabwe is not the "lived lie" of state officials. That is to be expected. Instead, it is the timid or
nonexistent response from other southern African countries to the crisis - humanitarian, social and economic - that is Zimbabwe today.
Mugabe was greeted with generous applause in Lusaka, while incoming SADC chairman, Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, called for peace and stability in the neighbouring state. That may be difficult in a country with 80% unemployment, the most massive hyperinflation since the Weimar Republic and large-scale starvation just around the corner. It is less difficult to look at the source of the problem - and it isn't the limited embargo of the west. It is Mugabe and his cronies.
As Mugabe is still hailed as the liberator and heroic freedom fighter against the British, no one seems willing to admit that the native hero has turned out a cruel and unaccountable egomaniac who cares infinitely less about the wellbeing of his own people than the British did.
The paralysis that strikes southern African states in dealing with such a neighbour is truly disheartening.
Before continuing with Mugabe-bashing on "democratic grounds", though, it might be worthwhile to suggest that Zimbabwe strikes us as so offensive not just because of the state of democracy in the country, important though that is.
Let us imagine that Mugabe had not ruined the economy to the tune of an official inflation rate of 7600% and climbing (and surely higher in truth), coupled with shrinking gross domestic product and more than 60% of the population living on less than $1 a day. Suppose his party did not need to bus people out of the country so that they could buy basic foods (in a formerly food-exporting country).
If he only were a dictator, violating human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of movement - Zimbabwean human rights activists headed to Lusaka were simply denied the right to leave the country - and freedom of political participation ... If he only rigged polls and awarded the land to his family and friends that he expropriated from - usually white - Zimbabwean farmers ...
Were those his only transgressions while reigning over a booming - not decrepit - economy, and a well-fed - not starving -
people, and an orderly - not corrupt and crime-riddled officialdom - might we forgive him, or grumble less loudly?
We hope for our sakes that we would still speak out.
And it is the shame of southern Africa that Zimbabwe's neighbours don't speak out, even as the situation presents itself.
They may one day have to answer to the Zimbabwean population - whatever is left
of it - once they have been freed of the Mugabean burden. And once, with some fortune and luck, they have found a head of state who acknowledges basic standards of civilisation.
Laurson is editor-in-chief of the International Affairs Forum. Pieler is senior fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation.
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